Posts tagged Self Worth
Developing Your Self Esteem
Oct 14th
Following these 6 easy steps will help you to find your ideal self, which already exists within you, ready to be released. The way you talk to yourself influences, in a significant way, your perception of your self worth.
Can you imagine how much easier various aspects of your life could if you have positive self-esteem? For sure, you have got so much potential and abilities that haven’t been uncovered and you might probably be the only one resisting the existence of these abilities and talents. Simply think about what your life could be like if you have the belief to use them. You will see that the flexibility to increase your self esteem lies inside you and when you discover the ways to take action, there will be no stopping you!
First, we will look at the important barriers to achieving strong self-worth and then one of the best ideas to combat them and get your self-esteem reaching for the skies:
The Enemies of Positive Self-Esteem
Before we can get into the strategies for developing your self-esteem, it is essential to establish and remove these things which were preventing you from relishing your self-worth.
1. Addition To Approval
Have you ever seen or been aware of anybody who has never been the subject of another’s views irrespective of how cursory that opinion is? Everyone has an opinion about one thing or another, including people however, if you happen to allow other folks’ opinions and views to characterize your self-worth, then without a doubt, this may have an impact on your self esteem. In the same way as your opinions about different people, good or not so good are merely the result of your beliefs and perceptions (and will not always be correct), so are other individuals’ opinion about you and should not discourage you. Your self esteem will carry on eroding so long as you permit other individuals’ endorsement or otherwise to control your life. It is important to be aware of your current position on this – are you hooked on other people’s approval?
2. Expecting Perfection
Nobody is perfect at all things; in other words, no one is ideal in everything. Someone could also be excellent at one thing but pretty appalling in another. Why is this so? It’s simply because perfection is unachievable at least in the human sense because when you reach a stage when you believe the situation is perfect, you will immediately see more possibilities of bettering it, which is normal. The time it poses a challenge and ineffective both to your level of self-assurance and image of self is allowing your self-esteem to be predicated on how perfect you are or perceived to be.
3. Your Moods
Typically, everybody goes through occasional troughs in their mood and that includes the most blissful or confident individuals however, the difference is that those that have a strong sense of self esteem know the right way to disconnect their feelings from their perceived self worth irrespective of how they feel. Feeling frustrated, tired, disheartened are all every day emotions and are quite natural as long as you don’t allow them to determine your self-belief.
Developing Your Self-Esteem
Now, having examined the enemies of high self worth, let’s take into account probably the most effective ways of creating powerful self-esteem:
1. Encouraging Self-Talk
What are your feelings when someone criticizes you? And what are your feelings when somebody praises you? People converse with themselves internally on a regular basis and listen to the voice in their head a lot of the time. Talking to yourself respectfully and approving of yourself are powerful self esteem boosters and it’s good to do more of it.
To create a strong self confidence and self-worth, start to focus on your self-talk and catch yourself any time you ridicule yourself. Start talking to yourself in the manner you’d speak to your best friend.
TIP: It is always helpful to create a list of positive affirmations to enhance your self-worth similar to: “I am my own unique self – important, ingenious and self reliant.” This will begin to elevate your feelings and the way you think of and converse with yourself.
2. Concentrate on Your Strengths
Typically people spend a lot of time searching for imperfections in themselves and means of correcting them rather than exploring the nice qualities in themselves and strengthening those. Everybody has an aspect of flaw and that’s the human factor, however focusing on it fulfills no helpful purpose. Rather, pay attention to and build your abilities to the point of dwarfing your weakness, which then diminishes into insignificance. Do not forget that you become what you concentrate on most and when your prevalent thought becomes more constructive, that will be the self you manifest. You’ll inevitably start to like yourself more and improve your beneficial self-talk.
3. Take Action
Developing high self worth requires “walking the talk”, in that effort is required in addition to beneficial self-talk, positive affirmations and such like. Consider someone you admire and the qualities you admire in them. Then jot down the qualities you need to gain to develop more self confidence and set these as goals. Write an action plan for attaining your goal and get to work. For instance, your objective could be physical, similar to a target weight or grades you may wish to obtain in the next test or getting that job promotion you’ve been dreaming about. Working towards achieving your objective will begin to shape your perception about yourself and boost your self confidence, which will enable you to realize that goal.
So go and make a start on writing your first objective now and begin working at it. In a very short time, you’ll start to manifest your best self and then realize that the perfect you already exist within you, you simply needed to shift your outlook to see it.
Is Self-Esteem Transferable?
Oct 14th
Not many people realise that a parent’s self-esteem will usually be transferred to their children. Yet studies reveal that there is a strong correlation between a parent’s self-esteem and self-esteem among the children. The outlook of an adult is often reflected in the outlook of their children, especially when it comes to how they value themselves. Parents with low esteem are likely to unintentionally encourage their children to have low self-esteem as well.
This sort of thing will have a major effect on the lives of their children and they could easily grow up to be timid or shy, perhaps even reclusive or certainly less sociable than other children.
Children with low self-esteem could grow up detached from society, because they will have had low confidence during the early years of their life, which will probably affect their relationships, careers and even their motivation to succeed.
For these reasons, parents should be aware of the things that they transfer to – or teach to – their children, often unintentionally. The copying of adult behaviour is extremely important to children while they are growing up because that is how they learn social behaviour. What they see in adults, they will also see in themselves. High self-esteem is just as important in children as it is in adults, since it helps them to make sound decisions and fair judgements in the face of peer pressure, in the same way that adults have to cope in the face of adversity.
Children with high self-esteem are proud to be themselves and revel in the things in which they excel, whether it is a particular skill or a special talent.
High self-worth or self-esteem is what causes children to gain acceptance among their friends. Those with low self-worth or self-esteem tend to be reclusive and don’t make friends so easily. It is these children who are most likely to be bullied at school because they are easy targets. High self-esteem brings with it high self-respect and this is just as true in children as it is in adults.
New-born babies already have high self-esteem, but they can do little until they have learned to speak and to control their bodies. As demands are made of them by their parents and siblings, they will often be criticised or punished for ‘bad’ behaviour and gradually they begin to learn that their job in life is to please others. As they grow older, the criticism and punishment continues and so instead of learning how to use the trials of life to improve and grow, they start to believe that if they did not get it right the first time, they have ‘failed’. We can never please everyone, and yet every time we think that we have displeased someone, we think we have failed in our duty to please others and our self-esteem takes a knock. Gradually our self-esteem becomes eroded and we start to think that we have low value because others do not seem to value us.
This is not to say that we are never praised, of course we are, and those event will normally improve our self-esteem, yet the knocks and problems of life will tend to negate that and slowly bring us down from where we were. The desire for high self-esteem becomes a need for approval from other people and yet the ups and downs of day-to-day life and circumstances, coping with adversities, social pressure or individual inner battles will often appear to show that we do not have that approval.
As children get older, society gives them bigger responsibility and that requires more and more feelings of confidence and self-value to carry out those tasks. Our feelings of success or failure depend upon and are influenced by the way we perceive role examples – especially our parents.
One of the best indicators of how much someone esteems or values themselves is to consider their sense of humour, since it shows their level of confidence and self-acceptance, as does the way they hold themselves while in public or among peers in a social group.
Feelings of self-worth will motivate us to achieve more, not only because we crave for attention or acceptance, but also because they want to feel good about themselves. If you have high self-esteem, you tend to see things in a positive light and you are much more likely to succeed and aspire to do the right thing.
Hence, parents should always attempt to ensure that their children know that they have value, because that self-value is what shapes them for the future.
